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More Tales from Tolstoi limbs swelled and twitched all over, and he groaned continually except when he was asleep. Zhilin also was dejected; he saw they were in evil case, and how to get out of it he had no idea.

He would have begun undermining again, but there was nowhere to hide the earth, and then, too, his master had threatened to kill him.

One day he was squatting in the hole thinking of life and liberty, and he felt very miserable. Suddenly right upon his knees fell a hearth-cake, and then another, followed by quite a shower of wild cherries. He looked up and there was Dina. She gazed at him, laughed a little, and ran away. "Now I wonder if Dina would help us," thought Zhilin.

He cleaned a little corner of the hole, dug out a bit of clay, and made cut of it a lot of puppets. He made men and women, horses and dogs, and thought to himself, "When Dina comes I'll fling them out to her."

But on the next day there was no Dina, and Zhilin heard the trampling of horses and the noise of people passing to and fro, and he could hear that the Tatars had assembled at the mosque and were disputing and screeching and consulting about the Russians. And he also heard the voice of the old man of the mountain. He could not make out very well what was going on, but he guessed that the Russians were drawing near, and the Tatars were afraid they might come to the aul and find out what was being done with the captives.

The Tatars debated together and then departed. Suddenly Zhilin heard a slight noise above his head.